


In Burgess

by Jackson_Overland_Frost



Series: The ColdHands Project [4]
Category: Danny Phantom, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Gen, Jamie Bennett-Centric, Knives, Magic, Older Jamie Bennett (Rise of the Guardians), POV Outsider, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:54:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26930965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jackson_Overland_Frost/pseuds/Jackson_Overland_Frost
Summary: Jamie returns and learns to adjust to normal life. Post-Frosted Shadows.
Relationships: Jamie Bennett & Danielle “Dani” Phantom, Jamie Bennett & Jack Frost, The Burgess Seven - Relationship
Series: The ColdHands Project [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1364842
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone,,, it’s me,,, this one will be a little shorter before we get into our Jack-centric fic, but I really like it, so I hope you enjoy!!

Jack hadn’t been able to stay in Burgess for too long after their return, just sticking around long enough to completely rest up, much to Jamie’s disappointment. Like, he understood that Jack had all kinds of wintery duties and stuff, but it was totally unfair when he was grounded at  _ least _ until school started, all while Jack was off in Norway or something. 

At least he wasn’t totally bored, stuck at home and all. Jamie still had his phone, and he texted his friends all about his latest adventure, receiving a chorus of “oof”, “rip” and “f man, we thought you died” in response. Jack had also left him with a whole list of combat exercises to do with his magic, telling him that if he wanted to do anything more than handy tricks, he had to be able to defend himself first. Which, fair. 

Jamie was getting the hang of his magic by now, and some days he would just sit in a trance for hours on end, untangling and combing out the ball of wire at his core. His mom would play her meditation music for him, and he wouldn’t snap awake even if Sophie ran screaming through the living room. Others days would find him drenched with sweat in the backyard and laughing, new cuts and scorch marks on the fence, in careful patterns. Sometimes his friends stopped by, though they stayed outside the property to avoid his mom’s wrath, and Jamie didn’t pay them much mind. His aim was getting better with only a week of practice, and being able to control his magic while it was in the air certainly helped. Sophie had to be sent to drag him inside for meals.

Finally, a month later and less than a week before school started, Jack came back to visit. He had spent the last month mostly in Finland, at the Unseelie Court realm, and had pretty big news. More importantly for  _ this _ story, he had also brought home presents from court. For his mom, one of those fancy nice pens with smooth black ink that never ran out. For Sophie, a sturdy, light purple Mardi Gras-style mask, with glittery silver trimmings and pure white feathers. 

And to Jamie he presented a polished wooden box, with a set of 12 Damascus steel throwing knives inside. They were nice, with leather grips, and little hooks at the base of the blade so that they could be used in close combat. “To practice with,” Jack had said sheepishly, rubbing the back of his next. “Until you’re not grounded anymore. You’re at the age where you still think weapons are cool, but you know to be careful with them, so. I thought you’d like them, at least, and maybe they’ll do you good.”

Later, in private, he also gave Jamie a set of sheaths to put them in — wrists, thighs, ankles, waist, shoulder, and the small of his back. They were comfortable enough, and it quickly became habit to put on the shoulder ones beneath his shirt in the morning. 

With little time left before school started, Jamie began sneaking out of the house in the evening to practice in the backyard. His window didn’t have a screen, and with a bit of magic it wasn’t hard to pop into the backyard for another few hours before passing out. Though he always woke up sore after that, the extra practice helped, and it calmed his nerves about going back to school. 

Honestly, the summer had felt like a full year, maybe two. Far too many things had happened, and the nightmares about Pitch had come back, blending in with the new ones, which featured shadowmen instead. Sometimes he woke up suffocating, feeling like his lungs and nose and mouth were full of shadows that wouldn’t let any air in or out, until his breath of fire burned the sensation away. Other times he jerked awake, a scream on the tip of his tongue as Jack fell into the abyss and his ankle throbbed with pain. Sometimes in his nightmares, the Guardians didn’t exist at all, and shadowmen swarmed in the corners of his vision. 

Soon after their bond was formed, Jack had taught him how to block out Jack’s thoughts, or lock his own away. When Jamie woke from nightmares though, his mind was as open as the sky, and his brother’s voice in his ear often soothed him back to sleep. He never did get a dreamcatcher. 

Practicing with his knives or his magic, and eventually both at the same time, made him exhausted enough that he fell asleep in a matter of minutes, nightmares or not. Outside, the light of his magic, the street lamps, and the moon and stars in the sky gave off enough light that he wasn’t afraid. 

Jamie closed his eyes as he stood under the full moon’s protective light, and felt for the thrum of magic all around him. Inside himself was his carefully managed coil of yarn and silver wire, neatly combed after hours and hours of work and meditation. But also the fibery green of the chloroplasts in each blade of grass and each leaf, the steady amber of wood, and the coppery speck inside of each bug. The lightning white of electricity, the warm yellow of the moon, the spark of silver faerie magic inside each of the half-dozen blades he carried on his body. 

He went through the motions of his training, slowly at first, and then faster and faster until he was almost dancing. Throw, duck, spin, throw again, dodge an invisible blow. When he ran out of physical knives, he switched to magic, slicing individual leaves from their branches. 

The Last Light of Burgess, boy savior of the Guardians, wasn’t an obscure figure in the spirit world. Nobody interfered with him, lest they get on the wrong side of the Guardians in a town Jack Frost himself patroned, but that didn’t stop them from watching. Though Jamie noticed them, he paid them no more mind than his human friends during the day. 

Still awake, Jamie’s mom called him back inside for a glass of hot water before he went back to bed — he had already brushed his teeth that night, after all. Why make him do it again just for the sake of some tea or hot chocolate?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Idk how many people are actually following this series, but if you’ve stuck around for this long I love and appreciate you with all my heart <3\. Anyways, comments are very much appreciated as always.
> 
> — oh, also if you’re keeping track, sorry for no text-fic stuff for a while~ I’m working on a different fic rn so this is just pre-written stuff for a bit...


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nobody quite understands Jamie Bennett

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Catch me completely forgetting to update this fic yesterday.... ........sorry

Everybody at school agreed that Jamie Bennett was a strange boy. Whispers followed him through the hallways, and his teachers pondered him behind closed doors. 

It wasn’t as if Jamie had ever disappeared into the background, but the rumors swirled around him more fervently than ever as he started his freshman year. His brother Jack, which none of the adults had ever seen, who Ms. Emily Bennett had somehow afforded to send to school in Europe. Jamie’s weeks-long sickness that summer, and then the subsequent month-long disappearance. And how he had returned with heterochromia and pure white streaks in his short brown hair. 

His art teacher, Mr. Garth, loved him — the boy was quiet and diligent in class, and turned in beautiful eerie works of strange happenings no matter the medium or assignment. He frustrated his English teacher with brilliant stories and bland or incomplete essays and assignments. 

Stories had swirled around Jamie since the boy was nine, excitedly telling his classmates stories about spirits and magic. His excitable nature made it easy to get a rise out of him, and his middle school teachers would express regret at not having seen the clear torment Jamie had been going through during their years teaching him. 

When he returned for his first year of high school, it was with a cheerful, friendly smile on his face, black circles under his eyes, and new marks on his arms and legs. There was a large new scar on his ankle, and smaller ones all over, some of them still bandaged. Not in the orderly way that would have any teacher call for a social worker, not in the malicious way that would warrant the CPS. Just… little cuts and scratches and bruises that would suggest Jamie was messing with things he shouldn’t, and winning against them. 

His classmates certainly had something against him, or perhaps they liked him and had a strange way of showing it. Jamie had always been easy to get riled up, but this year he was far calmer, if only because he always seemed tired. It always seemed as if he had stayed up all night to get his homework done, only his homework was so often never done. His name was still called in the hallways, too friendly to be anything but mocking, but the reactions shrunk in intensity.

One of his friends brought him a stick once, during lunch, and the four kids sat in a tight circle outside as Jamie brought out a tiny knife out of nowhere and began expertly scraping the bark away. Within a few minutes the entire recess period knew about it, and moments after that the supervisors knew as well. Jamie was marched down to the office, the knife confiscated, and his mom was called. Rumor has it that he was even threatened with suspension, but nothing even came of it. 

Jamie continued to bring his knives to school, though they only ever appeared in his hand when he was with his friends, or in art class. Mr. Garth never called the office on him, and he only used them to carefully cut his paper into perfect squares anyways. The speculation about the marks on his arms continued. 

A story told often is that of the time Charlie, a more popular boy, snuck up behind Jamie in the mostly empty hallway outside the art classroom. When his shoe made contact with the scar on Jamie’s ankle, the other boy whipped around, knife already in hand and eyes blazing. Charlie could have sworn one of his eyes was glowing — the newly grey one, in fact. That day during ninth period english, Jamie was called down to the office, and came back up within ten minutes with a shrug. Someone had anonymously tipped the office that Jamie still carried a knife on him, but nothing had been found in his backpack or on his person. 

Some time later, maybe a couple months into the school year once everyone had really settled in, a girl had shown up on top of the flagpole during lunch. She was fifteen or sixteen, and nobody recognized her — strange for how small the high school was. Still, the teachers panicked and threw up a fuss, calling 911 and trying to coax her down while she just laughed and laughed, the sound carrying down. 

“Who are your parents!?” One of the teachers yelled up at her, to more laughter. 

“Who are you,” asked a junior. 

Also, the girl was… incredibly beautiful. Not in a conventional way, but she had long black hair and bright blue eyes, and her laugh was brighter than the sun. She wasn’t skinny, but rather muscular, and covered in more scars than Jamie was. Dressed for the chilly autumn weather, she wore a brown leather jacket and black fingerless gloves, and she pulled out her phone as casual as anything while people scrambled below her. 

“Elle, what the FUCK!?” And then Jamie Bennett burst through the school doors, waving his phone in the air. The students parted to let him through like water, closing behind him and squeezing closer to get a good look at what was about to happen. 

The girl, Elle, looked up with a grin. “Hey Jamie, fancy seeing you here!” She called down, and Jamie gave a huff of annoyance. 

“Why are you here?? Get down from there, what the hell?” 

“Oh? You gonna make me?” She teased, her bright laugh floating through the air once again. 

“If you’re asking me whether or not I will climb up there and push you off myself, the answer is yes!” Jamie shouted back. Nobody doubted that he could do it, and only the teachers deceived themselves into thinking that they could stop him if he tried. 

As if standing up from a chair, Elle began to fall straight down from the flagpole, before hooking an arm and a leg around it to slow her descent. Though there were some quickly muffled screams as she began to fall, the chatter quieted as she landed neatly on the cobble. 

“Hey man,” she said, shoving her hands into her pockets as she stood right in front of Jamie. “Been a hot second.” 

Jamie raised an incredulous eyebrow. “Why are you here.”

“Just visiting, like I do~” Elle slung an arm around Jamie’s shoulders, and the two of them left the school grounds together. For some reason, nobody thought to follow them. 

After that, they only saw Elle when she announced her own arrival to the school…. by showing up on the flagpole, or roof, or the thinnest branches at the top of the tree. Whenever anyone asked Jamie who Elle was, he simply answered: “A friend”. If you were lucky and Jamie felt like being more specific, he would tell them, “She was my roommate while I was at sleep away camp for a month last summer. People bond after having to live together for a month, you know?”

Summer camp — yet another thing that Jamie refused to elaborate on. Presumably it happened during his month-long disappearance throughout some of June and most of July. Here’s what they did know: the camp was called the Star Sailor (though no camp existed of that name), it focused on space outside the solar system (though Jamie showed no interest in astronomy), and his brother Jack had been there as well. And this was all within the first quarter of school!

Yes, everyone agreed. There was simply something unexplainable about Jamie Bennett.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That’s it <3 
> 
> Next up, that conversation Jack was gonna have with Mother Nature, + whatever tf he was doing at court (and maybe something extra for Halloween? We’ll see).

**Author's Note:**

> Part two: October 24


End file.
